When I fell in love 21 years ago, I thought I was marrying a sweet, docile southern belle. I knew nothing of Newt Knight and the Free State of Jones.
That would be the first cousin thrice removed of my wife, Virginia Lucile Knight. When things didn’t go to his liking, he simply founded an entire new country with himself as the leader.
That pretty much illustrates the power dynamics of the Emmerich family.
Somewhere in the middle of the movie, Newt’s wife turns to him and says, “God bless you Newt, you’re the most stubborn man I ever met in my life.” I laughed out loud.
After the movie, which I saw with my son, I later recalled the line to Ginny, who had seen the movie earlier. “I thought of you when I heard that line. It made me laugh,” she said. Welcome to my world.
And it’s not just Ginny. My three children have somehow inherited this unique Knight character trait of stubbornness, or shall I call it confidence? Come hell or high water, they do it their way, which is often extremely experimental. Somehow they make it work.
When the movie ended, the screen showed several close ups of actual old black and white photos of Newt. Oh my goodness! Those are Ginny’s eyes!
The star of the movie, Matthew McConaughey, looks remarkably like the real Newt Knight, who looks remarkably like my brother-in-law Terrell Knight. Amazing how genetics works.
Patriarch John Jackie Knight fought with Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and, presumably, was awarded some type of land grant in southeast Mississippi.
John Jackie was the son of Miles Jesse Knight from North Carolina. He enlisted in 1777 as Private, 2nd NC Regiment
under Col. Patton. Miles Knight was eventually promoted to the rank of Sargeant in 1780, 10th NC Regiment.
John Jackie built a prominent plantation and owned slaves. He and his wife Keziah Davis had 12 children. Albert Knight fathered Newt Knight. His brother Daniel Champinoise Knight fathered Ginny’s great great grandfather.
Whenever the issue of Newt Knight came up, Ginny would always say “I’m a Covington Knight not a Jones County Knight.” I now know that this is a polite way of disclaiming any miscegenation in her bloodline. Both Newt and Daniel apparently fathered additional families with African American wives. Such was life back then.
The family consensus tended to be that Newt Knight was a deserter and a thug. Ginny once gave me an old copy of The Echo of the Black Horn, written in 1951 by Ethel Knight. It was scathingly critical of Newt Knight. This book made vague references to some horrible family scandal, which apparently was Newt’s marriage to and procreation with African-American Rachel Knight as portrayed in the movie.
When we started hearing about the movie, Ginny read other books about Newt and now has changed her opinion about her distant relative. “It was tough times. He was just doing the best he could do,” she now concludes.
The general consensus is that Academy-Award winning director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, The Hunger Games) tried hard to be historically accurate. The actors and actresses in the movies look uncannily like photos of the real people.
In the movie, Daniel is the nephew of Newt who is tragically shot on the battlefield. In fact, as my wife’s existence attests, Daniel was actually Newt’s first cousin and went on to father multiple children.
I just think its cool to have a major Hollywood movie that is about my in-laws. Interestingly enough, The Patriot, which starred Mel Gibson, is based on my great (times 4) grandfather Edward Lacey, a colonel, and later a general, in the Revolutionary War.
Thanks to the Ancestry.com, I was able to trace an ancestor back to Robert the Bruce of Scotland about whom the movie Braveheart was made. Mel Gibson starred in that movie as well, which caused my young children to believe for years that they were related to Mel Gibson.
Whether hero or villain, The Free State of Jones is an interesting film that sheds light on the darkest aspects of the Civil War. The movie displays a unique individualistic response to the horrid conditions of the south in the middle of the war. Whether accurate or not, it is infinitely believable.
As incredible as it may seem, I saw very interesting parallels between the Knights in my family and the Knight portrayed in the movie. Like my Knights, Newt Knight refused to accept the harsh reality of conventional wisdom and instead marshalled his indomitable will to carve out an alternative, improved reality more suitable to what he had in mind. Nothing could stop him. And nothing seems to stop them. It is, quite simply, a force of nature.
Add to this remarkably clear vision somehow undistorted by cultural upbringing, unwavering loyalty toward friends and family, bitterness toward evil and unwarranted personal transgressions, a powerful sense of what is right and wrong and a gentle, sympathetic soul.
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Wyatt Emmerich is the owner of Emmerich Newspapers Inc.
